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Ask HN: How to learn to sell?

355 points rasulkireev | 2 comments | 16 Oct 22 15:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.581s | source

Hey HN,

I am a solo founder that just finished writing code for my project (MVP) and am ready to find clients.

- for the sake of the question, my clients will be small physical businesses. Think, Family Doctor's Office, Local Cafe, Small barber, etc.

I will be developing a blog for SEO purposes and doing other things to promote my business online. However, I believe the key to success here will be "Cold Sales". I have never done that before. So, if you could recommend a book, a blog post, other online resources, or you just have a random advice that I could learn from, I would be very thankful.

Suffice it to say I will be starting out ASAP, even though I don't know anything. I believe practice is the best teacher. However, if there are any resources that could help me get up and running quicker that would be awesome. Thanks a ton in advance.

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brailsafe ◴[16 Oct 22 17:26 UTC] No.33225391[source]▶
How do you know they'd want it if you haven't already be talking to them face to face? A friend and I used to do this when we were getting started in web design. We thought "surely all these restaurants and cafes would want better websites to attract more customers". Turns out actually nobody cares, they don't even care about serving quality food or coffee a lot of the time, many don't even see the value proposition of having a bike rack. The owners are often lazy entitled assholes even if they're not responding to a cold call, unless they're immigrants. The only successes were face to face, when you're already a customer or regular patron, and they do express they actually need something done. Square is the most successful startup I'm aware of with small businesses like this.
replies(1): >>33226376 #
1. desiarnezjr ◴[16 Oct 22 19:18 UTC] No.33226376[source]▶
They may not necessarily be lazy OR entitled.

Every business has it's laundry list of problems. Every business.

Your list of problems and worldview may differ a great from their day-to-day reality. Very few want to work on resource suck that has a unknown outcome. Your selling a SaaS service to them (just picking the example in this thread as the example) isn't likely their biggest problem or decision at that moment.

replies(1): >>33303214 #
2. brailsafe ◴[22 Oct 22 23:36 UTC] No.33303214[source]▶
I absolutely agree, it just happens to turn out that many of them were entitled assholes anyway, and it's rare for their laundry list of problems to include anything that's marginally more difficult or more expensive than absolute rock bottom labour can handle. You could also argue that the clientele doesn't care either, maybe they don't have tastebuds for example. But I don't think it would be much of a reach to suggest that there's a not insignificant portion of small business owners that don't pay much for the labour, don't provide a quality product, and don't even bother training people.